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Luckin Coffee is a publicly traded Chinese coffeehouse chain. Luckin was founded in Beijing in 2017 and rapidly grew to include over 4,500 locations by January 2020. In fact, Luckin Coffees growth was so quick that the number of Luckin coffee locations exceeded the number of Starbucks shops in under 3 years.

Luckin Coffee found itself in hot waters after having falsified financial and operational figures. A report, published by short-selling firm, Muddy Waters Research, claimed that Luckin inflated their numbers by up to 88%. After an internal investigation, Luckin Coffee announced that their COO, Jian Liu, had indeed fabricated the company’s 2019 sales by about $310 million USD.

The Wall Street Journal, investigated these claims further and found that a network of fake buyers and a made-up employee also helped drive the company's "growth".

On April 8, the U.S. stock market halted trading on all Luckin shares and on May 12, CEO Jenny Zhiya Qian and COO Jian Liu were relieved of their positions. As of May 20, 2020, Luckin Coffee stock was able to be traded again.

Cargill, Inc. is a U.S. based privately held global corporation that focuses on purchasing and trading agricultural commodities. Founded in 1865, it is the largest privately held corporation in the United States in terms of revenue. In 2018, their revenue exceeded $114 billion. Cargill employs over 166,000 employees in 66 countries. A subsidiary of Cargill Inc, Cargill Meat Solutions, recently came under fire for employee mistreatment during Covid-19.

The meatpacking industry has always had a notorious reputation for poor working conditions and Covid-19 has only made this more apparent. Currently meat and poultry employees have among the highest illness rates of all manufacturing employees and are the least likely to report said illnesses for fear of repercussions.

At Cargill’s High River slaughterhouse, supervisors were given N95 masks and plastic face shields while workers claim it was weeks before they were even given paper and/or cloth face masks. 900 of the plants 2,200 employees became ill with Covid-19.

Cargill decided to not tell employees about their colleagues who were falling ill in an effort to keep everyone working. In fact, one Cargill meat plant didn’t tell employees about the illness racing through the plant until 130 employees had already tested positive. One worker even stated that he was told to remove his mask because “it was creating unnecessary fears among plant employees”. A few weeks later that worker died of Covid-19.

According Bloomberg who interviewed 32 workers, supervisors were telling symptomatic employees without high fevers to simply take acetaminophen and keep working.

Uber is a public U.S. based ridehailing company. Apart from their popular Uber ridesharing service, Uber also offers food delivery (UberEats) and a micromobility platform for users looking to share electric bikes and scooters. The company is based in San Francisco and has operations in over 785 cities worldwide.

During the Covid-19 crisis, Uber chose to layoff over 3,700 people over a mass Zoom call. While lay offs are inevitable during this time, Uber showed that they did not care enough about their workers to lay them off in a more considerate manner.

Uber is used to being under the spotlight for immoral business practices. Over the years Uber has been highly criticized for their unfair treatment of drivers, uncomfortable company culture (leading to multiple sexual assault allegations), increasing traffic congestion, disrupting the taxicab business, and for their aggressive strategy in dealing with regulators and city officials. In fact, if you visit the Uber Wikipedia page it reads like a rap sheet for all the times Uber has found themselves in hot water.

Bird is a shared electric scooted company based in Santa Monica, CA. Bird was founded in 2017 and since then has expanded to over 100 cities in Europe, the Middle East, and North America. Bird saw much early success with their scooters logging over 10 million rides in its first year of operation.

On March 27th, 2020, Bird sent a mandatory one-way Zoom call invite to over 400 of their employees with no explanation. When the employees logged onto the Zoom call they were met with a woman’s voice that began reading a scripted speech, informing the attendees that they had all been laid off. The speech was only two minutes, at which point the call ended without giving the employees a chance to ask questions. Immediately afterwards the laid off employees were also automatically logged out of their company email and slack accounts.

Caterpillar, Inc. is a Fortune 100 company which designs, develops, manufactures, and sells construction equipment and machinery. Caterpillar employs over 100,000 workers and earned revenue of $54.7B in 2018.

Despite having to shut down three major plants during the COVID-19 crisis, Caterpillar still opted to distribute $500M to shareholders via dividends.

Marriott International is an global chain of hotels and other hospitality facilities, with nearly 7,000 locations worldwide. Marriott earned revenues of over $20B in 2018 and employs ~176,000 workers.

During the COVID-19 crisis, Marriott furloughed most of its American workers. However, at the same time, it paid out more than $160M in quarterly dividends, while its board voted to give CEO Arne Sorenson a 7.7% raise. Marriott earned $1.2B in profits in 2019.

Starbucks is a chain of coffee houses with over 28,000 locations in 77 countries across the world. Publicly held, Starbucks employs nearly 300,000 people and generates around $24B in revenue annually.

On March 20, 2020, Starbucks announced a generous policy whereby employees in the US and Canada would be paid in full for up to 30 days of absence during the COVID-19 crisis.

However, Starbucks did not come around to this position quickly. A Buzzfeed investigation found numerous cases during the crucial time when the virus was spreading throughout the US where employees showed up to work sick and were not only allowed to serve food and drinks to customers, but were also refused leave by management.

Employees during these fraught early days of the virus were unable to take the requisite 2-week quarantine period off of work, undoubtedly enabling the spread of the virus to other employees and customers.

Holland America Line is a cruise line headquartered in Seattle, Washington, and offering cruises throughout the world on its 15 ships.

Due to travel restrictions, many crew members have been stuck on cruise ships since the outbreak of the corona virus. However, Holland America has opted not to pay those crew members who are not necessary for the essential operations of the ships, leaving employees stranded without pay on a ship with no opportunity to try and find employment elsewhere.

It should be noted that other cruise lines with employees in the same situation opted to pay stranded employees for some length of extra time. For example, Royal Caribbean extended pay such employees for an extra month.

About The NoGo List

Which companies put profits over people? What is the latest big business scandal? Who's taking inappropriate handouts from the government?

The NOGO List was formed as a way for consumers to see what companies have been up to and make informed decisions about which companies deserve their business. We believe these actions should be public, and should not simply disappear with the next news cycle.

Our goal is to present as accurate a picture of each company as we can, so that consumers can make their own decisions. The NOGO list can be used on its own, or as a starting point for further research. Use it however you like.

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